Despite living 40 miles from the coast for all of my 28 years, saltwater definitely flows through my veins. The smell of the sea and the sound of breaking waves have accompanied many of the most memorable moments in my life.
Summer weekends spent at the seaside, partaking in a heady mix of the things that teenagers enjoy and the wildlife riches of the Norfolk Coast have left me with a craving for sand, sea and surf - and an inescapable itch that has to be scratched regularly.
One of the most perfect moments of my life happened just the other week when a pod of killer whales - a lifelong ‘must see’ – surfaced off the beach I stood upon. It was entirely appropriate that the gasp of admiration I took on seeing them breach and panic the grey seals basking on the rocks between us filled my lungs with the scent of the sea.
It was the lure of the coast that saw me spending every daylight hour by the sea at the weekend. I crunched along shingle beaches in the teeth of an easterly gale that whipped the North Sea into a frenzy and gazed inland over picture-perfect panoramas of reed, marsh and ditches laid out like silver ribbons between derelict windmills – a reminder these were once working landscapes rather than precious nature reserves.
Watching a party of penduline tits extracting fluffy sea aster seed heads within touching distance, glimpsing flypasts from bitterns, chancing upon 23 regal cranes feeding at the roadside and a veritable swarm of marsh harriers over their afternoon roost was my antidote to painting the spare room, cleaning out the garage, or doing the Christmas shopping.
And so I faced the inevitable Monday morning pleasantries of “Have a good weekend?” with a smug smile on my face and a windswept glow to my cheeks. I most certainly did.